Microsoft Communications was showcasing its cross-browser video platform, Silverlight, at IBC to demonstrate some of the benefits of its deepening strategic partnership with Move Networks, a supplier of high-definition video-delivery technology.
Move is, in a sense, a rival to Brightcove and has a competing adaptive streaming technology. This allows on-the-fly switching between 15 different possible video-bit rates, by pre-caching two-second chunks of video across different parts of the network. Move’s heuristics decide at two-second intervals what the network conditions are and accordingly what data-rate the player should be running the video at. As in Brightcove’s case, the aim is to prevent skipping or discontinuities in the video, by allowing ‘graceful degradation’ to take place between one level of picture quality and the next one up or down.
The Microsoft stand showed recorded coverage of the Democratic convention (played back as a live stream from the US to IBC’s less-than-reliable Internet wireless connection) providing a good test of Move’s technology at work. As promised, the quality smoothly adjusted itself to the varying bandwidth available.
Gabriele Di Piazza, managing director for media and entertainment at Microsoft, said NBC’s earlier Olympics coverage, which used the Silverlight platform without the benefit of the Move technology, had nevertheless garnered some impressive viewing figures. There were around 1.3 billion hits across 65 million unique registered users. Most strikingly, perhaps, the average viewing time was 27 minutes - an extremely high figure for ‘over-the-top’ Internet video.
Di Piazza points out one of the advantages to the viewer of NBC’s online coverage: NBC’s broadcast network had access to all of the Olympic sports, but was only able to cover seven a day. There were a total of 3,500 hours available over the Web, allowing enthusiasts of such minority sports as field hockey and equestrian events to access footage not shown on TV.
Di Piazza says this sort of long-form viewing matches Microsoft’s own long-term vision of video’s future on the web, if only because it tends to be advertising-supported. “Even if 80% of Internet video is [short-form] user-generated content, 80% of the ads will come from long-term content,” he declares.
NB1 This story has been re-edited to remove references to Move Networks supporting Silverlight for NBC’s Olympics coverage.
NB2 One of the sponsors of this site is Microsoft Mediaroom
It is definitely exciting to see what type of quality Adaptive Streaming can bring to the desktops and very soon even beyond desktops. Quality is one of the key factors in addition to interactivity and having ability to push HD quality content to broadband (5MB and above) connected desktops, it’s truly revolutionary.
AFAIK, Microsoft did *not* use Move Networks for the Olympics. The quote above is either a MSFT or editorial error.
HmmConvenient, I think you’re right. Di Piazza talked to me first about the Olympics coverage and then about Democratic Convention streaming before then going on to talk about the use of Move. I assumed he meant Move was used for both, but I can see re-reading my notes that he could equally have meant it was only used for the Democratic convention. I will double-check with the Msft people and then change.
HmmConvenient, I have checked with Microsoft and you’re right. I will amend accordingly.
Thanks for pointing this out